The present work deals with the remote-monitoring and -maintenance of pumped solar thermal systems and was created in cooperation with TiSUN GmbH. Main motivation is the problem that a failure or shortfall of a solar system is often not noticed by the operator. The reason for this is the existing backup heater, which takes over the water heating mostly automatically.

To keep the effort and additional costs for remote-monitoring and maintenance within reasonable limits, the existing measurement- and control-technology of the solar system has to be used. Therefore the status quo of customary temperature-, flow-, pressure- and irradiation-sensors in solar systems is described. The solar controller is the central gateway for sensor inputs, the operating data recording and transmission of data to an external display. For remote maintenance, access to the settings of the solar controller is required.

As a practical reference, three on the market available solar controllers are examined regarding their suitability for remote-monitoring and -maintenance. It turns out that the subject can be solved very differently: from simple data acquisition and transmission with memory cards, via additional modules with web servers and network connectivity, up to the data transfer to external web server or digital picture W-LAN frames.

Furthermore the data analysis of solar systems for fault detection, control and function optimization is outlined. Not all influencing factors are recorded digitally, however it is shown that for only a few temperature profiles are enough for a rough functional description of a plant. Finally an outlook on future developments of the relatively new solutions for remote-monitoring and -maintenance of solar thermal systems is given.

Inside Job

Just watched "Inside Job" with Conny - what a great movie, my favorite part just in the end:^click

" Why should a financial engineer be payed 4 to 100 times more than a real engineer? A real engineer builds bridges, a financial engineer builds dreams. And if those dreams turn out to be nightmares, other people have to pay for it. "

To hell with those damn jobs, which do nothing for society and destroy the planet.

Zeitsparwerk - hackerspace to boost the DIY(do-it-yourself) culture

I'm now a proud member of the club "Zeitsparwek" in Wörgl.The idea behind is simple: Everybody who likes to do handyman's work and be creative has some great tools lying around at home and some small place to follow his passion (alone). ALONE is not fun enough - so why not build up a community with the same spirit, share the experiences and tools. So we rented a 130sqm hall in the center of Wörgl and began to fill it with tools, furniture, people and life. Feel free to pass by and have a look what we are doing there, on weekends there are always some members in the club, following their passion:

Himmelfahrtskommando 2009 - Cassis Calanques!

The title Himmelfahrtskommando has resulted from the puplic holiday called "Christi Himmelfahrt". Each year around this date I go with friends on an action trip, where we focus on mountain biking and rock climbing. We prefer to camp in tents and look for beautiful locations, which fit our special needs.

This year we chose South France => Cassis => Calanques and stayed there for a full week.

I don't want to describe the incredible week we had with just plain words. Turn up our speakers and enjoy this video: